Pokin' and proddin'

Last week I got the results of my 1-hour glucose test, which is used to screen for gestational diabetes. The 1-hour test is taking after fasting overnight and you drink a very sweet (50 g of glucose) carbonated orange drink...within 2 minutes and then they test how much of it has been metabolized within an hour of drinking it. I failed the test, though not by too much. "Acceptable" ranges are below 140, and mine was 149. So, I was told I needed to do a followup "3-hour glucose challenge test"...which I did today. It was so much worse than the 1 hour. The drink is twice as sweet (100 GRAMS of SUGAR), and you have to fast for 14 hours. You get a baseline blood draw before you drink the sickeningly sweet glucose syrup, and a blood draw after 1, 2, and 3 hours after you drink it to see how you are metabolizing it over time. By the time I arrived, I was already starving, the drink is so sweet it makes you nauseous, and then you're not allowed to drink any water, cottonmouth or no, for three hours (and they draw blood twice from each arm). I observed that after I dosed the syrup, our baby freaked and did the spaz dance for about 40 minutes, then she and I both crashed, hard. I literally fell asleep sitting up at 9 am. I got super nauseated in hour 2, and my mouth felt like a desert. Then lots of lethargy, and weakness...and more blood draws. I drank my 20 ounce bottle of water as soon as the last blood draw was done. I felt really weird and out of it as I walked to the toward the train station and and grabbed a lunch I ate lunch rabidly. It was either the best sandwich I have ever had in my life, or I was hungrier than I've ever been in my life. Weirdly, half way through the sandwich I started to sweat and thought I might pass out. Strange sensation, but I couldn't stop eating because I was starving!

I suppose the point is that some tests like this feels like you are dosing yourself and your baby with a near lethal amount of sugar while starving and dehydrating yourself to death while getting four vials of blood drawn. Wait. That's what actually happened.

Now, it's wait and see. I am praying I don't have gestational diabetes. I don't think I can take cutting much more out of my diet. Ugh.